Whenever I find myself strolling in the hutongs near Gulou and see the entrance of Bed Bar, images of Liang Tao’s 2005 cross-gender performance come to mind. I met her that same year in the 798 art district, just after her performance “Madhouse in Paradise” at Marella Gallery. For that piece she built a replica of a room from a Western mental institution, in which she spent two days as a “perfectly happy” schizophrenic patient. Her point was that, after having spent a period of time in a Chinese mental institution, a Western one would be quite a nice place to live.
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LOS ANGELES — Now that I’ve written so extensively about residencies and their benefits, maybe you’re wondering: which residency to join? As mentioned in my series of articles, the Alliance of Artist Communities is a great resource, with well over a thousand sites here and abroad.
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LOS ANGELES — I first noticed a few pictures of a curious performance piece on Sina Weibo and then Ai Weiwei also posted about it on his Twitter account. Since March 24, He Yunchang, also known as A Chang, has been sleeping outside in the Beijing artist village of Caochangdi (whose name literally means “Grassland/s”) until the grass is fully grown.
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LOS ANGELES — Independent Curators International is setting up shop in Beijing. Working with the prestigious Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, ICI’s first curatorial intensive in China will be focused on the subject of The Museum of the Future?: Curating Institutions.
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BEIJING — I moved to China almost a year ago now, into a country where I knew no one and where even the internet was foreign. I pulled away from my main social circle geographically, but did what I could do stay connected via the internet and phone.
And yet, just as I turned to the internet for social connection, I also realized it was increasingly difficult to rely on my usual circles. Timezones, the Great Firewall and the weak internet connection in my neighborhood all made me realize that the utopian ideal of global connection was far from being achieved.
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BEIJING — Anecdotally, Beijing, like New York, definitely feels like a city of immigrants and migrants. Few people I meet actually grew up in Beijing. For Beijing Design Week, Beijing artist Chen Ke partnered with Beijing curatorial lab ChART Contemporary to find a retro, more personal way to connect this city of migrants and immigrants with their loved ones far away.
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BEIJING — I arrived at Dongfeng Art District one afternoon, a 20-minute drive east of the more famous 798 and Caochangdi arts districts in northeast Beijing. It’s a short but somewhat winding drive away from the shinier parts of Chaoyang District, Beijing’s most economically-developed area. “Dongfeng” means ”East Wind,” and the area hosts a number of arts studios and makeshift galleries.…
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Last night, the National Art Museum of China (中国美术馆) launched Translife (延展生命), their triennial of new media art from around the world. Curated by Zhang Ga (张尕), Translife is divided into four parts and three floors: Sensorium of the Extraordinary, Sublime of the Liminal, Zone of the Impending and, outside, The Weather Tunnel.
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If Beijing has a Chelsea, 798 Art Zone, then surely it has a Williamsburg. That “alternative” neighborhood is Caochangdi (草场地). According to legend, Ai Weiwei moved out here in early 2000 to set up his studio and the China Art Archives and Warehouse. It was a strange move at the time, but galleries and artists soon followed, and the area is now home to a number of well-known spaces.
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Joseph DeLappe, known best for his performances situated in first person shooter (FPS) games, has unveiled the beginning of a new series of work at Where Where Exhibition Space (“哪里哪里”艺术空间) in Beijing’s Caochangdi neighborhood.
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